de·ism /ˈdē-izəm/ : deism: the belief that God made a perfect machine when he made the universe and it runs on its own
without further assistance from God; God does not actively guide or influence events in the world

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Deism is the belief in a creator, but not revealed religion. Through reason and science we can explore the wonders of God's creation, but we cannot discover the whole truth of the Creator himself. It is within our ideals to be for the greater good, for progress and enlightenment, but not to judge others who have done us no wrong.

There is no church. This is a place for higher learning and community through reverence of the natural world.

Incendiary statements towards anyone or any opinion will not be tolerated. We are capable of adult discussion here, and that is what is expected. That said, please express your opinions gracefully.

Do not feed the trolls. You know what this means. If you give them the attention they want, they'll keep coming back.

Do not use downvotes to express disagreement. Save them for those who contribute poorly, not differently.

We do not want our queue filled with memes and rage comics. We will tolerate them in good taste (example, using the rage faces to tell a relevant story), but not as a cheap means of expressing an opinion. Such submissions are subject to removal at the moderators' discretion.

Do not post in txt-speak. This isn't Youtube. Comments or links submitted in txt-speak will be removed for poorly representing this community.

There is no elitism here. It is good to be proud of your beliefs, but comments and links overtly belittling other beliefs will be removed as a violation of the first rule. Stay classy, r/deism.

Please read the wiki before posting questions about Deism. If you still have questions, great! We'd love to answer them.

"The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries."
-Thomas Paine, Age of Reason

Welcome to /r/deism! It's generally pretty quiet around here lately, so thanks for posting! Feel free to drum up some discussion. There's plenty of good suggested readings on the subject in the sidebar. I'd suggest (and many others here will as well) starting with Age of Reason. I think you'll find it to be particularly apropos to the discussion you've just had with your friend.

What do you mean by uncertainty? Because in terms of the big bang theory (which means everything that happened in the first few seconds of the universe as we know it), we're pretty certain about what happened?

Well, that makes discussion difficult. But maybe you're not entirely 100% on what the big bang theory is. The big bang theory isn't about the exact "start" of the universe, but the moments right after, the first seconds of the universe. Never time 0, just time 0.000001. The big bang theory never talks about the exact beginning, just what we know what happned in the first few seconds.

The big bang theory doesn't say that nothing exploded like some people believe, it just says that the very early stages of the universe were essentially a large explosion of matter, incredibly hot and incredibly dense.

My uncertainty was that we don't know why the universe happened, exactly when it happened , or what triggered it. The big bang theory also leaves me believing that all of my world was just a big coincidence, and that I might as well not exist.
The idea of a creator makes more sense to me, and that's why I'm to be a deist.

We do know almost exactly when it happened 13.978 billion years ago, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. The fact that we can get such accuracy today, so long after.

The other thing to remember is that we're not even sure if questions like:

why the universe happened?, or what triggered it?

actually make sense. That might sound silly, but it's true. If you ask a similar question like, "Why did an elephant happen?", it can be only really be answered with "random chance". Evolution just happened to go in that direction and make an elephant with a long trunk and big ears. It could've been different if the conditions were different.

Really, there is no "why", that's just how it is. I guess the only "why" that's really true is to say that the laws of the universe lead to that event.

Also, asking:

What triggered the big bang?

might also not make sense, there might not have been any trigger. Remember, before the universe space and time didn't exist, we honestly don't know anything about "before the universe", or even if such a thing is possible.

"Before the universe" events might not have needed causes. There's no reason to think that our laws of physics from our universe would apply outside /before it too.

The big bang theory also leaves me believing that all of my world was just a big coincidence, and that I might as well not exist

Well, I wouldn't say it's a coincidence. It just is the way it is. The laws of the universe mean that our universe unfolded the way it did, and you are part of that universe.

When you say, "I might as well not exist", from the perspective of the universe, that's true. But that's not the important perspective. The important perspective is from people you know, and yourself. From that perspective, it's very, very important and very good that you exist.

I'm okay with the unvierse being cold, vast, and uncaring, because what's important is all the wonderful people that aren't.

It makes no sense for us to talk about it as RELEVANT to us, since no data REMAINS from then. (as far as we know.) We don't know for sure that there was actually no "before." Much contrary to what everyone on the internet seems to throw around, since they don't realize that stephen hawking for the sake of his books always refers to the theories he personally prefers as if they were already conclusively proven.

Well, yes, that's true, but we do know that space and time emerged from the big bang event. There may have been a "before", a different kind of time, or different kind of space, but we have no evidence of this, so it'd just be blind speculation.

What we do know for certain is that space and time as far as we know them, emerged at the big bang.